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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s pardon, which could be the first of several after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, drew condemnation from Democrats and other critics.
Flynn, a retired army general, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about interactions he had with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks leading up to Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.
Since then, he has tried to withdraw the guilty plea, arguing that prosecutors violated his rights and tricked him into agreeing to a settlement. His sentence has been postponed several times.
“It is a great honor for me to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has received a full pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving.” Trump wrote on Twitter, a day before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.
Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, who told a court in September that she personally asked Trump not to forgive his client, said the forgiveness was “bittersweet” because Flynn was innocent.
Trump’s move was the highest-profile clemency he has granted since taking office. Among others, the Republican president has pardoned Army personnel accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff and hardliner against illegal immigration.
“This pardon is undeserved, unprincipled, and one more stain on President Trump’s legacy, which is rapidly diminishing,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said in a statement.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, called it “an act of grave corruption and a blatant abuse of power.”
MUELLER INVESTIGATION
Flynn served as Trump’s first national security adviser, but the president fired him after just 24 days for lying to Vice President Mike Pence when controversy broke out over the former general’s contacts with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Flynn was one of several former Trump aides who pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy. Russia denied meddling.
In May, Attorney General William Barr shocked many in the legal community by ordering prosecutors to drop the case, a decision that was made after Trump repeatedly complained that Flynn was being treated unfairly.
Flynn and the Trump administration said Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the case, was required by law to grant the dismissal request. In August, an appeals court denied Flynn’s request to order Sullivan to end the case.
“The president has pardoned General Flynn because he should never have been prosecuted,” the White House said in a statement. “In fact, the Justice Department has firmly concluded that the charges against General Flynn should be dropped. This full pardon achieves that goal and ultimately ends the partisan and relentless persecution of an innocent man.”
The president has spent the days since the Nov. 3 election trying to overturn the results and refusing to yield to Biden. On Monday, he allowed his administration to participate in a transition to the Biden White House, but has continued to challenge the legitimacy of the election. With less than two months to go before Opening Day, he could focus his remaining time in office on more pardons and other moves to polish his legacy.
Two former White House officials said more pardons were likely. “This is unfettered presidential power that the president enjoys using,” one of them said.
‘DID NOT LEARN HIS LESSON’
Trump said in March that he was seriously considering a full pardon for Flynn. He said the FBI and the Justice Department had “destroyed” Flynn’s life and that of his family, and cited an unspecified and unsubstantiated report that they had lost records related to Flynn.
Flynn was supposed to help cooperate with the government as part of his plea deal. But then he changed his attorney and tactics, arguing that prosecutors in the case had tricked him into lying about his December 2016 conversations with Kislyak.
The Justice Department has repeatedly denied the prosecution’s misconduct allegations, and Sullivan rejected all of Flynn’s claims in December 2019.
Federal prosecutors had asked the judge in January to sentence Flynn to up to six months in prison, arguing in a court docket that “the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved as if the law did not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for their actions. ”
Flynn also served as the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, but was ousted in 2014 in part due to his management style and views on how to fight Islamist militancy.
She joined Trump’s election campaign in 2016 and at that year’s Republican National Convention led supporters in chants of “Lock her up,” referring to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Other former Trump aides were convicted of federal crimes following the Russia investigation. Trump’s longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone was sentenced Feb. 20 to three years and four months in prison for obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to lawmakers investigating Russian election interference. Trump commuted his sentence.
Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, was sentenced last year to three and a half years in prison after being convicted of illegal lobbying and witness tampering, which combined with a sentence in a related case amounted to a term of more than seven years behind bars. . Manafort got out of jail in May and is serving the rest of his sentence at home.
(Information by Eric Beech and Jeff Mason; additional information by Patricia Zengerle, Alexandra Alper, and Diane Bartz; written by Alistair Bell and Jeff Mason; edited by Tim Ahmann, Howard Goller, and Peter Cooney)
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